In addition to directing and appearing in “Evil Dead” and “The Rocky Horror Show” at the Cameo Theatre, he's also prepping for his off-Broadway debut. He's slated to direct “Thank You for Being a Friend,” a musical parody of the '80s sitcom “The Golden Girls.” It's slated to open in New York in January.

“I'll go up there, do that project and be working from both cities,” Pennington said

He got the New York gig through playwright June Rachelson-Ospa. He had staged her fairy tale spoof “Rapunzarella White” during his stint running the Woodlawn Theatre a few years ago. She connected him with Nick Brennan and Luke Jones, the creative team behind “Thank You for Being a Friend.”

“The theater is a really small world. When you work in New York, you can even cut that in half, and it's an even smaller world,” Brennan said. “A couple of years ago, we came in contact with (Rachelson-Ospa), who was like, 'This show reminds me of this guy from San Antonio.'”

She set up a conference call for the three of them, and they clicked so well that they stayed in touch. When Brennan and Jones decided to re-mount “Thank You for Being a Friend,” they thought Pennington would be a good fit.

“He gets it and understands it,” Brennan said. “He's going to be fantastic.”

There is a Rockethub crowd-funding campaign to finance some aspects of the production, but the staging isn't contingent on meeting the $5,500 goal, Brennan said.

“It would cover things like getting all the costumes cleaned, helping to give Jonathan a better salary — little touches here and there to make everything shine,” he said.

Without that money, he said, “We'll still make it work. ... It would be great to be able to do it the right way.”

Pennington, 34, has been chipping away at the project for a few weeks, offering ideas via telephone texts and calls. He'll be heading to New York at the end of November to work on it in person; rehearsals are slated to begin in December.

He's hoping the show opens other doors. Eventually, he said, he'd like to move to New York fulltime. Though he has often acted and directed here in San Antonio, in New York, he'd like to step out of the spotlight.